Part II: Why Do Children and Young People Drop Out of Sport? A Dynamic Tricky Mix of Three Rocks, Some Pebbles, and Lots of Sand

Organised sport is one potential antidote to the global youth inactivity crisis. Therefore, understanding why young people drop out constitutes a key research endeavour. In part I of this series, we developed and validated a new Youth Sport Dropout Questionnaire (YSDQ). In part II, we used the YSDQ-LV (49-item long version) to examine dropout in 960 university students from seven European countries. A four-stage analysis investigated the relative and combined importance of dropout reasons. Three items—the rocks—were statistically more important: “I prioritised schoolwork and had no time left to take part in sport”; and “I found other things that I enjoyed doing more than sport”; and “I found it stressful when I did not perform/play as well as I expected”. On average, however, these rocks were rated as “moderately important”, along with 19 reasons (the pebbles) rated as “slightly important to moderately important”, and the remaining 27 reasons (the sand) rated as “slightly important to not at all important”. These findings suggest that sport dropout is not caused by a single reason but is underpinned by a dynamic tricky mix of reasons—a series of rocks, pebbles, and sand unique to each young person.